Chair of UCLA Faculty Assn. Comments on LA Times Article Concerning Legislative Challenges to UC Autonomy

Below is a note from Chair Dwight Read followed by excerpts from the LA Times article to which he is responding. A link to the full article is also provided.

A Note from the Chair of the UCLA Faculty Association

Professor Dwight Read

Today, Dec. 16, the LA Times ran an article, “State Wants Say in UC, CSU Budgets,” about a constitutional amendment that would strip the University of California of its autonomy. To provide historical context, the excerpt below explains how UC gained its autonomy, why the citizens of California voted for it in 1879, and why it is important to preserve it now.

Autonomy of UC

From “UCRP in Context: State Obligation to UC”

(See the full document at http://www.uclafaculty.org)

The history of the University of California goes back to 1849 when Legislators included in the first state constitution a vision of a public education system supported by the State for the good of all citizens. Gold was discovered in California in the same year that the image of a future university system began to take shape in the minds of Legislators. A few years later the State took advantage of the federal Morrill Act of 1862, which established the land-grant college program: the federal government donated federal land to the states if they used it to create colleges. However, giving land for colleges did not constitute federal funding, a principle which occasionally resulted in colleges teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, yet located on prime state real estate. In short, states had to take the land donations from the federal government but fund the colleges built upon them to make them grow and flourish.

In 1868, the CA state Legislature passed the Organic Act, which provided the charter for California’s only land-grant university. Signed by Gov. H. H. Haight on March 23, 1868, Charter Day, the new act created the University of California. One of the provisions of the Organic Act allowed the State to create a “corporation…which is ‘The Regents of the University of California’.” The UC Regents first began organizing in Oakland in 1869, but by 1873 moved to Berkeley and opened the first campus of the University of California” (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/uchistory/ general_history/overview/index.html ).

Creating the University of California meant first creating the concept of a Board of Regents who would govern it like a corporation. However, the early corporation faltered through the interference and meddling of the state legislature in the workings of a university. The Regents knew they needed independence in governance if they were to accomplish their mission to create the highest quality university system of higher education anywhere, but independence guaranteed not by statute, which could be easily changed, but by the state constitution. Just about this time, across the bay, Stanford began with a very different premise: a private university with enough private resources to govern itself as it wished without any promises to the State or the citizens

It was not until 1879 that UC’s special status as a public trust took final shape. During this year the Regents attended the second state constitutional convention and lobbied for an amendment that would give the University of California constitutional autonomy from legislative control. They persuaded enough citizens that it was better to put their trust in the Regents than in the state legislature to manage an academic institution and keep it separate from politics, meddling, and corruption. In May 1879, the voters approved the new constitution that guaranteed the University of California a level of independence shared by few other public institutions in the nation and gave its governing Board of Regents “full powers of organization and government,” subject only to limited oversight by the state legislature. (For a general history of shared governance at the University of California, see the work by John Aubrey Douglass, Research and Occasional Paper Series: CSHE.1.98).

CA Constitution: Article 9, Education, Sec. 9.

The Regents of the University of California shall be vested with the legal title and the

management and disposition of the property of the university and of property held for its benefit and shall have the power to take and hold, … all real and personal property for the benefit of the university or incidentally to its conduct…. Said corporation shall also have all the powers necessary or convenient for the effective administration of its trust, including the power to sue and to be sued, to use a seal, and to delegate to its committees or to the faculty of the university, or to others, such authority or functions as it may deem wise.

Only 5 other major public university systems share the designation of public trust, among them the U. of Michigan, another one of the highest-ranking public college systems in the country.

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Here are excerpts from the LA Times article:

California Legislature wants a say in public university budgets: Lawmakers say years of fee hikes and pay bonuses threaten the right to an affordable, high-quality education in the University of California and California State University systems.

Michael J. Mishak, Los Angeles Times, December 16, 2010

Angered by years of student fee
hikes at California’s public universities and colleges, lawmakers are pursuing legislation that would give them broad new powers over how the higher education systems spend taxpayer money. The proposals include measures to limit student fees, freeze executive compensation and increase budget transparency, and even a constitutional amendment that would strip the University of California of its historic autonomy. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed several such proposals, but legislative leaders, faculty and student groups and labor unions are hoping for an ally in Gov.-elect Jerry Brown, who investigated fundraising practices at the California State University in his current job as attorney general…

The fee increases have accompanied years of executive bonuses and come as the University of California undertakes an aggressive recruitment effort aimed at out-of-state and international students to boost revenue.

Lawmakers say the combined actions threaten a fundamental promise of life in the Golden State: an affordable, high-quality public college education. That principle, enshrined in the state’s master plan for higher education 50 years ago, was reaffirmed by the Legislature in a report this year.

Acknowledging a philosophical shift, both university systems have changed student “fees” to “tuition,” feeding legislators’ appetite for more oversight…

“All we know is we dump money in and they come out short,” said state Sen. Leland Yee (D- San Francisco), who requested the audit. “… Every time you ask UC what’s going on, they say, ‘It’s none of your business.'” Last week, Yee resuscitated a bill that would require university foundations and auxiliaries to adhere to state open-records laws. The issue exploded this year after Cal State Stanislaus refused to disclose information about a June fundraising appearance by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Yee said he also planned to renew his proposed constitutional amendment as well as legislation that would ban pay hikes for top administrators at public universities in bad budget years. He pointed to UC regents who approved a $410,000 raise for UCLA’s top hospital executive this year, bringing the administrator’s total compensation to $1.3 million. Officials said the money comes from private donations…

…[Patrick] Lenz, the UC vice president for budget, said he and his staff visited Sacramento in late October to brief the Legislature and the administration on the coming fee increases before regents considered the proposal. He rejected the notion of more legislative control, citing the turnover in the Legislature under term limits and the protracted state budgeting process of recent years. “We have a fiduciary responsibility to long-term planning. When you’re playing politics with the university year in and year out, how does a university manage that?” he asked.

UC has pledged to tighten its belt, seeking to achieve as much as $500 million in administrative savings over the next five years at its 10 campuses, Lenz said… “I’m not certain, given the state’s fiscal condition,” he said, “that we can get back to a point in time where we would propose a budget to the regents without a fee recommendation.”

Full article at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-legislature-universities-20101216,0,7734577.story